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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Bees, Bees and more Bees!

Who said that there was a shortage of honey bees??? Whoever it was I need to call them and let them know that I found them!!! My house is infested...

We arrived home from vacation last Wednesday and I found a whole pile of dead bees in front of my doors that lead from my bedroom to my pool. In my crazy state of exhausted I did a quick "hmmm" and vacuumed them up! Didn't give them too much thought but everyday I seemed to be sweeping up some dead bees. I never saw them alive and have been really too busy to care too much about them. Then Sunday night there was one buzzing around my bed.

Well that was enough for me. I called my pest control service and they arrived within and hour (when you have a daughter who is allergic to fire ants and bees are an unknown they rush). Apparently I have a hive in the concrete wall right behind my bed???!!! WTF and why my house????

At least now I have no more bees coming in but I am sure there is a great big gooey glob of honey comb and a bunch of dead to dieing bees behind my bed...

Unfortunately in my delicate state I did not get any pictures of any of this but this video shows the crisis issue...

Dinner last night was a simple on off marinated grilled chicken and grilled beans.

For the chicken marinade I just used up a bunch of vinaigrette salad dressing bottles that have been cluttering up my fridge. Now that I make all of our dressings these have just been sitting there. I marinated the chicken for about 3 hours in the fridge.

For the beans I used my grill pan. First I blanched the beans then tossed them in sesame oil, peanut oil, soy sauce, garlic powder and salt and pepper. I threw some mushrooms in as well.

I keep hearing about this shortage of honeybees, but we seem to have plenty. Also, the Xerces Society (a Portland-based invertebrate conservation organization, like Nature Conservancy for bugs) says the real worry is the decline of native bees. Because of competition with European honeybees.

To address this, I've started including pollinator habitat enhancement in my restoration sites at work now,I hope it'll help!